Martingale Revisited

Example spreadsheets and comments on example spreadsheets.
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Euler
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Everybody has touched martingale at some point.

Thankfully most of us realise it's folly before we get in too deep, but plenty do not and end up losing a lot of money.

There are many ways to stake, but I stake by fixing liability on either the back or lay side. That means my payoff is a direct result of my edge over time. It also means I can raise or lower stakes as required and keep it consistent.

Martingale just doesn't work as there is no edge it in. It's a staking system and will, therefore, break-even at best before costs. But eventually, you hit a number that you can't reasonably stake and therefore it's a double failure from that viewpoint.

You also realise that no matter what you say, people will still try to make it work.
Leeds1919
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Joined: Fri Feb 07, 2020 5:20 pm

Euler wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:53 pm
There are many ways to stake, but I stake by fixing liability on either the back or lay side. That means my payoff is a direct result of my edge over time. It also means I can raise or lower stakes as required and keep it consistent.
Probably a stupid question but what does that look like? Is it backing say for £10 at 3.00 and laying at 3.00 for £5 so your liability is the same or backing and laying a the same odds for the same stake?
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jamesedwards
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Headless Chuck wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:34 pm
TraderFred wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 6:58 am
I was doing the martingale earlier on this year. Thought everything was going well, spent the lockdown dreaming about new cars and champagne for breakfast.

Now I have nothing.
Funny you should say that. I work with a bloke who is a compulsive gambler and we have long conversations about football, betting etc. Before the lockdown we got onto Martingales and recoveries etc. and bashed out the most robust theoretical system we could come up with. Obviously I never actually followed it through but a look at my data suggested that from the beginning of the year to the time UK racing ceased it would have done OK - returning several times the initial bank. I never went back to it, and couldn't anyway as running it with real money would interfere with things that I actually want to do, but perhaps early 2020 was just a particularly kind set of cirumstances for that specific system.
Martingale systems will usually work for a decent period of time and then one day it will crash. That's what makes the system so dangerous - it's easy to believe and/or make others believe that it works.
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ShaunWhite
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Utterly pointless running a whole sequence of bets just to win back a pound. The maths is blindingly obvious, for a martingale to "work" you have to start on pathetically low stakes and even with a 100% strike rate you make almost nothing. You make far more using a proper stake on each trade and just doing the job properly.

Yeah you can stake so it means you theoretically never lose, but you don't win anything much either so it's just a parlour trick rather than being something of interest to anyone being serious. You won't find many successful traders starting the day using £1 stakes so they can escape at 8pm with a £1025 bet to win a whole 95p for a full day's work.
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Tuco
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ShaunWhite wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 5:23 pm
You won't find many successful traders starting the day using £1 stakes so they can escape at 8pm with a £1025 bet to win a whole 95p for a full day's work.
...profit is profit Shaun, lol :lol:
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firlandsfarm
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MemphisFlash wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 4:03 pm
Martingale, fibonnacci, Kelly criterion all strategies that will send you to the poor house.
I've never understood why Fibonacci has so many followers especially in the City … what is the mathematical basis? To me it's just a random sequence.
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ruthlessimon
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 5:39 pm
I've never understood why Fibonacci has so many followers especially in the City … what is the mathematical basis? To me it's just a random sequence.
https://adamhgrimes.com/fibonacci-fibs/
https://adamhgrimes.com/fibonacci-thinking-deeper/
https://adamhgrimes.com/testing-fibonaccis-12/
https://adamhgrimes.com/fibonacci-conclusions-22/
https://adamhgrimes.com/whats-wrong-fibonacci/

.. athough maybe a bit off topic, cos he's lookin' at it as a signal rather than a staking method. But still interesting reads imho. Love his analysis style
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Derek27
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grindhog wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 5:23 pm
Ok Im convinced Martingale can work as Ive seen the figures and I am going to modify my strategy to do another strategy and supply the sheet for all with the workings to prove how it can work. Be back tomorrow with that.
Looking forward to seeing this proof tonight. :)
jamesg46
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Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2016 1:05 pm

Derek27 wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:48 pm
grindhog wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 5:23 pm
Ok Im convinced Martingale can work as Ive seen the figures and I am going to modify my strategy to do another strategy and supply the sheet for all with the workings to prove how it can work. Be back tomorrow with that.
Looking forward to seeing this proof tonight. :)
It's getting a little late, this Martingale system can take up some serious time, I knocked off at about 5ish, although I was up at 3am.... maybe hes only just started and hell be along soon.
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johnsheppard
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For years I've been calling a Martingale a Martindale...no wonder I haven't made it rich :(

How do you guys decide what the maximum stake a market can take? e.g. throwing a $10,000 stake on a monday race (after your 15th straight loss)...is gonna throw a spanner in the works....if you're using a martindale....I mean martingale...:)

Markets are completely independent of each other...like flipping a coin...

Seems to me the most profitable staking strategy would only take into account exactly what's happening in a specific market and be completely isolated from previous markets, wins or losses, a bank amount or anything else... the stake should be maximised based on various happenings in the market and availability...

The Kelly Criterion seems the most sensible to me, but it's knowing what your edge is is kind of impossible...without looking at historic averages or something...(which I am not sure makes sense to do for the same reason as markets being independent)

Hmm it's very complicated and orta make your head hurt....

There should be a martingale is fail youtube video. I pretty sure it'd get a gazillion views...1cents per 3000 views is what I heard ya get... martingale might be profitable after all...
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johnsheppard
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Location: Cairns Australia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTg0mqxuGeA

See look...this guys got 41,000 views, and he's talking about some other martingale maths stuff that makes my brain hurt even more...and he's writing on a whiteboard...

I'm sure there's money to be made here..
Emmson
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Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 6:47 pm

I typed *Martingale* into the search engine on here and it came up with 34 pages of results.


search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=martingale

It never goes away.
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Derek27
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johnsheppard wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:36 am
For years I've been calling a Martingale a Martindale...no wonder I haven't made it rich :(

How do you guys decide what the maximum stake a market can take? e.g. throwing a $10,000 stake on a monday race (after your 15th straight loss)...is gonna throw a spanner in the works....if you're using a martindale....I mean martingale...:)

I've seen a very funny video (although it wasn't intended to be) of somebody doing a Martingale on roulette. He lost £10, £20, £40 and then £80. He got a winner next time but the maximum stake was £100. :lol:
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Derek27
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Location: UK

johnsheppard wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:40 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTg0mqxuGeA

See look...this guys got 41,000 views, and he's talking about some other martingale maths stuff that makes my brain hurt even more...and he's writing on a whiteboard...

I'm sure there's money to be made here..
I'm glad he wasn't my maths teacher - didn't have a clue what he was talking about. By the way, that was a greenboard. They replaced blackboards in the late 70s. :)
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johnsheppard
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Location: Cairns Australia

Derek27 wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 1:22 am
I'm glad he wasn't my maths teacher - didn't have a clue what he was talking about. By the way, that was a greenboard. They replaced blackboards in the late 70s. :)
Oddly enough he has the same manorisms as my secondary school math's teacher....Mr Green....I have fond memories of him because he was so disillusioned with his job. Hundreds of kids that don't give a crap about maths would sorta do that to ya....

But as aside, I didn't have a clue either, but then I watched his his next video...on Brownian motion...that's actually sorta interesting...except that now I don't know who I am or where I live...plus I am drunk (not really)...Then I started googling stuff and found this...
https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/bro ... 5f02204b14

Now having blown a whole hour, I better get back to do what I was doing before...
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